Getting acquainted

As someone who’s not very social, I’ve found the process of getting acquainted with LEDs a strange one. I’m not sure if this is how friendships usually work – there’s been a lot more misunderstandings than I’m used to. There’s been exploded LEDs (lesson: resistors are essential), there’s been mutilated soldered joints (lesson: slide shrink wrap on BEFORE soldering), there’s been flickering, dodgy lights (lesson: not only are resistors essential, the right resistor is essential).

There’s been good moments too though. There’s been working lights, there’s been lucky guesses, there’s been learning.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been slowly making my own masterpiece: a reading light. A reading light so fancy, it requires three switches. It has colour change lights. I’m really pulling out all the stops for this one. The idea came from an old disc brake I found (combined with my lack of bedside light), and it’s so fancy, I even polished it.

So far, it only looks like this:

But it’s getting there. And I’ll be sure to post photos once it’s finished.